The Key to Midnight

faster than usual - which was sufficient to trigger the anguish that had washed like a dark tide over her. And now events, people, inanimate objects, and the very air itself seemed to acquire evil purpose that was focused upon her. She felt a malevolent pressure, squeezing her from all sides, like a vast weight of water, as though she had sunk to the bottom of a deep sea. Already it was unbearable. The pressure would not relent until she turned forever from Alex Hunter and put behind her any danger of emotional intimacy. Intense fear lay dormant in her at all times; now it had been translated into a physical power that squeezed all hope out of her. She knew how it would have to end. She needed to break off the relationship that sparked her claustrophobia; only then would she obtain relief from the crushing, closed-in, listened-to, watched-over feeling that made her heart pound painfully against her ribs.
        She would never see Alex Hunter again.
        He would come to the Moonglow, of course. Tonight. Maybe other nights. He would sit through both performances.
        Until the man left Kyoto, however, Joanna would not mingle with the audience between shows.
        He'd telephone. She'd hang up.
        If he came around to visit in the afternoon, she would be unavailable.
        If he wrote to her, she would throw his letters in the trash without reading them.
        Joanna could be cruel. She'd had plenty of experience with other men when simple attraction had threatened to develop into something deeper… and more dangerous.
        The decision to freeze Alex out of her life had a markedly beneficial effect on her. Almost imperceptibly at first, but then more rapidly, the immobilizing fear diminished. The bedroom grew steadily cooler, and the sweat began to dry on her naked body. The humid air became less oppressive, breathable. The ceiling rose to its proper height, and the mattress beneath her grew firm once more.

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    13
        
        The Kyoto Hotel, the largest first-class hotel in the city, was Western style in most regards, and the telephones in Alex's suite featured beeping-flashing message indicators, which were signaling him when he returned from the eventful afternoon with Joanna Rand. He called the operator for messages, certain that Joanna had phoned during his trip from the Moonglow to the hotel.
        But it wasn't Joanna. The front desk was holding a fax for him. At his request a bellhop brought it to the suite.
        Alex exchanged polite greetings and bows with the man, accepted the fax, tipped him, and went through the bowing again. When he was alone, he sat at the drawing-room desk and tore open the flimsy envelope. The message was from Ted Blankenship in Chicago, on Bonner-Hunter letterhead:
        
        Courier arrives at your hotel noon Thursday, your time.
        
        By noon tomorrow Alex would have the complete Chelgrin file, which had been closed for more than ten years but which definitely had now been reopened. In addition to hundreds of field-agent reports and meticulously transcribed interviews, the file contained several excellent photographs of Lisa that had been taken just days before she disappeared. Perhaps those pictures would shock Joanna out of her eerie detachment.
        Alex thought of her as she had been when she'd gotten out of the taxi a short while ago, and he wondered why she'd so suddenly turned cold toward him. If she was Lisa Chelgrin, she didn't seem to know it. Yet she acted like a woman with dangerous secrets and a sordid past to hide.
        He suspected that amnesia was the explanation for her situation - perhaps the result of a head injury or even psychological trauma. Of course, amnesia didn't explain where and why she had come up with an alternate past history.
        He looked at his watch: 4:30.
        At six-thirty he would take his nightly stroll through the bustling Gion district to the Moonglow Lounge for drinks and dinner - and for that important conversation with Joanna. He had time for a leisurely soak in the tub, and he looked forward to balancing the steamy heat with sips of cold beer.
        After fetching an ice-cold bottle of Asahi from the softly humming bar refrigerator, he left the drawing room and went halfway across the bedroom before he stopped dead, aware that something was wrong. He surveyed his surroundings, tense, baffled. The chambermaid had straightened the pile of paperbacks,